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One Nashville girl's journey to becoming a runner

Week of 8/18/14 – 8/24/14: Do Whatever I Want, Week 1

I’m officially on no training plan for what feels like the first time in forever. And it basically stays that way through the middle of November! Yay, running freedom! Of course, I’m doing a running streak starting in October, so it’s not 100% freedom for that entire time, but close enough.

Monday: Total Body Cardio from 21 Day Fix and 2.5 mile run (12:24 average pace)
Tuesday: 15 minutes of Upper Fix from 21 Day Fix and 5 mile run (11:40 average pace)
Wednesday: Lower Fix from 21 Day Fix
Thursday: Pilates Fix from 21 Day Fix and 2.5 mile run (12:04 average pace)
Friday: rest day
Saturday: 3.5 mile run (11:57 average pace)
Sunday: 2 mile run in the awful triple-digit heat index and full sun (13:18 average pace)

Wow, LHR training did a number on me. My legs and my lungs have completely forgotten what a normal pace feels like, which is ridiculous since I didn’t do it that long. The first two miles of Monday’s run were slow going (with a lot of walking…and a lot of bugs), but I did some strides for the last half mile to remind my legs what running feels like.

Then I hit the treadmill on Tuesday to help with my cadence and pacing. I’d noticed that the cadence on my last few runs had been really low (150 vs my usual 175-180), which I figured was what was causing me to be less efficient. I managed to stay mostly in the 170s while running on the treadmill, which is good. I did take four walk breaks (totaling about 7 minutes out of the hour), so my average cadence was a little lower at 162 (my walking cadence is around 120).

Finally, my legs remembered what they were supposed to do, so when I headed out on Thursday (after the heat index dropped from triple digits!), they automatically went to around 10:30 min/mi and wouldn’t slow down, so I ended up walking a bit. Okay, so maybe I’m going to have to recondition on pacing a little, since my lungs haven’t caught back up yet.

Saturday, I did manage to run nonstop (thanks, rain!), albeit a little faster than I initially meant to. (Mile 3 was run in 11:16. Not super fast, but faster than my easy runs need to be ran.)

You will notice that I tried to stick with doing my 21 Day Fix workouts every day (until I got to the weekend, anyway). This is because I officially start the program at the end of the month (details to come), so I’m trying to get in the routine. It made running tough though! Sore, jelly legs are hard to run on.

I know. I loooove summer, but if it could just drop to the 70s-80s and lower the humidity, I would be happy. Unfortunately, that kind of weather doesn’t last long around here. We seem to go from 90s to 30s very quickly once the seasons decide to change.